


The Blasted Youth

by blanketed_in_stars



Series: 52 Weeks of Wolfstar [26]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1994, Letters, M/M, Post-First War with Voldemort, Post-Hogwarts, Self-Reflection, Wolfsbane Potion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 14:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4266684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus finds that teaching is a bit like dying: sometimes painful, and always full of ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blasted Youth

**Author's Note:**

> Week 26
> 
> Title is from one of my favorite songs, "Skip The Youth" by Frightened Rabbit.
> 
> Wow, halfway done! I really am grateful for all the support you guys have been giving me in kudos and especially comments! It means the world to me :) If you want to spread the love, one of my friends is also doing this challenge! Her pairing is Swan Queen - Regina/Emma (Once Upon A Time) - and her pseud is ellacj. Go check her out! She's one heck of a writer!

_No Wolfsbane this week._ Remus savors the thought as he stirs a lump of sugar into his tea. The potion is the most disgusting thing he’s ever tasted, worse than that time Sirius—

He puts down his cup with hands that tremble slightly. The empty staff room threatens to close in on him, but he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he opens them he’s recovered enough to take a fortifying gulp of tea. Looking around, he realizes that part of the strangeness that’s followed him around all week is because the only other time he entered this room was to play a prank on Professor Kettleburn. Now, he is not only allowed to be here, but—

“Ah. Remus. Good afternoon.”

He turns to see Minerva entering behind him. She deposits a large stack of parchment rolls on one of the tables and taps the kettle with her wand. “How was the first week?” she asks, pouring the heated water into a cup.

“Fine,” Remus says shortly. He can’t shake the discomfort, especially hearing Minerva talk to him like that, as if he was never her student. He’s not seventeen anymore—over thirty, actually, goodness—but one look from behind those silver glasses makes him feel about a foot tall.

She raises her eyebrows and he shrinks another inch or two. “Really? In my first year of teaching I found myself with a headache that not even our matron could banish.”

Remus shrugs. “I’m coping, I suppose.” He holds up the teacup as evidence.

Minerva gives a small _hmph,_ not sounding convinced, and sits across from him. “Tea isn’t always the best remedy. Just ask Mr. Potter.”

“What?”

Minerva sips from her own cup. “The third-years had their first Divination lessons yesterday. According to Sybill, Harry’s tea leaves contained a death omen. The Grim, as she told me this morning.” Her lips are pressed into a thin line. “As if the boy didn’t have enough to worry about this year.”

Perhaps it’s the idea of a monstrous black dog that makes his stomach flip over. “You mean Black.” When she nods, Remus swallows. “I didn’t realize that you knew—“

“About the Fidelius Charm?” Minerva nods again. “I was there when Dumbledore himself offered to be Secret-Keeper.”

Remus blinks at her. All he ever heard was that in the end, Sirius had taken the oath. At the time he had been afraid to ask for details. “They should have accepted,” he says, then sighs. He hadn’t meant to speak aloud.

“I agree,” Minerva says after a moment. She’s gazing into her tea with an absent expression. “They said Black was trustworthy, more than anyone else. Of course everyone believed them…” She looks up suddenly. “You were his closest friend,” she says. “There was no sign of—anything?”

Remus drains the last of his tea before he answers. He thinks, without wanting to, of the tension in the cottage, the coldness in the space between them. The arguments and the lies evident in the set of their shoulders. There were plenty of signs, but he was too selfish to see them. “None,” he tells her. He looks into his empty teacup, almost afraid of seeing the Grim staring up at him, but finds only wet black leaves.

\---

On Halloween, he recuperates in his office. When he hears the tramp of hundreds of feet in the hall he rises and moves slowly to the door—and stares. He hears bits of chatter from the crowd, _what was he doing, the Fat Lady, Sirius Black._ When Sir Nicholas arrives several minutes later, telling him to go to the Great Hall immediately, Remus looks out the window and thinks he can feel that shadow looking back.

\---

“Professor Lupin?” Harry asks. Remus continues extinguishing the lamps, one at a time, the action strangely calming. He can’t stop imagining what Harry must have heard—James, pleading with Voldemort. He snuffs out another flame and tries to focus on what Harry says. “If you knew my dad, you must’ve known Sirius Black as well.”

Remus’s stomach twists uncomfortably, and he turns so fast that he bangs an elbow on one of the lamps. “What gives you that idea?”

"Nothing," Harry says quickly. Remus is more relieved than sorry. "I mean, I just knew they were friends at Hogwarts too."

Remus runs his thumb along the douter handle. Friends, yes. He hates remembering that there was a time before this; it makes things so much harder. "Yes, I knew him," he admits. The image of a small room in an inn in Scotland rises to the surface of his mind—"Or I thought I did." He looks at this boy, a sort of living ghost, but so much _more,_ so much his own person. He feels like he's choking. "You'd better be off, Harry, it's getting late."

The Boggart was a mistake, he's sure of it. Willingly confronting that sort of fear and pain is stupid, especially when he knew what would happen. And hearing James… He knows that part of it is envy, a twisted sort of longing to hear those voices again, even if only to endure the last words they ever spoke. It drives him mad sometimes thinking about them when every tangible reminder has vanished. Even at Hogwarts there's no trace of them left.

But that's not quite true, he thinks, not anymore. Harry is here. He looks just like James, of course, except for his eyes, and he acts like a gentler version of his father. Remus likes to think that Harry is the sort of person James would have become if he'd been allowed a few more years with his own family. _You would be proud of him,_ he thinks, extinguishing the last of the lamps.

\---

The map lies open on his desk, a splotch of dark liquid on one corner. _"Scourgify,"_ Remus mutters, and the parchment is clean again. He sets the full goblet down, farther away this time, and watches three small dots vanish into Hagrid's hut.

By now the map is worn with years of use, but the ink still blooms like it always has. Remus remembers helping find the charm to make that design move, there, and to let sections fade and reappear. But he didn't draw it. No, that was Peter, probably born with a paintbrush in his hand. Remus turns the parchment slightly and finds the spot where two walls don't quite meet up—he remembers that, too, how they agonized over it for weeks, that one little detail, and finally gave up. If the map was perfect, after all, they would have nothing else to do in life, so they let it lie.

He looks up at a knock on the window and rises to let the tawny owl in. It's Wens, he realizes after a moment, his father's bird. She gives him a rather sharp nip before allowing him to take the letter, and is gone again before he can offer her water. He has to laugh a little, seeing her go. It's as if she can sense the wolf in him.

The envelope is smudged and a little bent, but the letter inside seems to have been folded dozens of times. Remus can read his name at the top, and his father's name at the bottom, but in between only a few lines are legible under all the creases. He sighs.

The main point seems to be that Remus ought to visit. It's been years, _only an hour or two,_ Lyall urges, there have been some interesting advances in the study of Boggarts that he really would like to discuss. The scent of coffee is strong on the parchment.

His father is right, of course. It has been years. The last time they really spoke was in '89, after a lecture on Non-Human Spirituous Apparitions. Remus hadn't wanted to go but had let Andromeda talk him into it—and then he and Lyall had ended up sitting for hours in the teashop down the road, talking about wandmaking and Muggle authors.

So perhaps it has been a long time. Too long, even. But going back is hard, and Remus doesn't think he can stomach another hard thing right now. Going back means even more ghosts, this time of his mother and his younger self, since it's still the same house with the peeling paint. He did offer to fix it up, once, but that was met with loud protestation.

Remus runs his finger along the edge of the letter and remembers how it was back then—loneliness, shredded bedsheets, cold nights and colder moons. The real reason he tries to stay away—the reason that he hates admitting, especially to himself—is that things aren't very different now from those early days. He's a bit older, that's all.

He reaches out to pick up the Wolfsbane and pauses with it halfway to his mouth, watching Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave Hagrid's. There is another little marker there, and he squints to read it. And then he has to put the goblet down very carefully to rub at his eyes. When he looks again, the name is still there. _Peter Pettigrew._

His heart, already faster with the moon, begins to hammer against his ribs. It's a mistake, wishful thinking, some bit of magic responding to the maker's desires, but the map doesn't lie, it never lies. And if it's not lying, if it's true—

And then it's there, a fast-moving dot, speeding full-tilt across the parchment—he knows that name, tracked it around the castle himself for a year—it starts with an S and ends with a betrayal, and Remus finally upends his goblet as he reaches for his wand.


End file.
